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Atlas Shrugged

On this page: Background  Summary  Contents  Related Links  Reviews, Criticism and Analysis

On related pages: Frequently Asked Questions  Chronology of Events in the Story

Background

Atlas Shrugged is Rand's magnum opus. It is her last, longest, most philosophically detailed, and in the opinion of many, best novel. Since its publication in 1957, it has been her best-selling book.

Summary

The plot is framed as a mystery story, but with strong elements of romance and science fiction, as well as Rand's trademark philosophical ideas. There are actually two mysteries: one about why so many of the world's most productive minds are disappearing, the other about who invented a revolutionary new kind of motor. As you might guess, the solutions to the two mysteries are closely related. Readers follow the struggles of Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive, and Hank Rearden, a steel magnate, as they attempt to answer both of these questions and stave off the collapse of an increasingly irrational and collectivist society.

Contents

• Introduction to the 35th Anniversary Edition (by Leonard Peikoff)

Part 1: Non-Contradiction

1. The Theme
2. The Chain
3. The Top and the Bottom
4. The Immovable Movers
5. The Climax of the D'Anconias
6. The Non-Commercial
7. The Exploiters and the Exploited
8. The John Galt Line
9. The Sacred and the Profane
10. Wyatt's Torch

Part 2: Either-Or

1. The Man Who Belonged on Earth
2. The Aristocracy of Pull
3. White Blackmail
4. The Sanction of the Victim
5. Account Overdrawn
6. Miracle Metal
7. The Moratorium on Brains
8. By Our Love
9. The Face Without Pain or Fear or Guilt
10. The Sign of the Dollar

Part 3: A is A

1. Atlantis
2. The Utopia of Greed
3. Anti-Greed
4. Anti-Life
5. Their Brothers' Keepers
6. The Concerto of Deliverance
7. "This is John Galt Speaking"
8. The Egoist
9. The Generator
10. In the Name of the Best Within Us

Related Links

• The Atlas Shrugged FAQ answers some of the common questions about the book.
• The Atlas Shrugged Chronology provides the events of the novel in a sequential timeline.
• Excerpts: A number of excerpts of Atlas Shrugged are available online from various sources:
  • Francisco discusses the San Sebastian mines (from Part 1, Chapter 6)
  • Francisco explains Rearden's virtue and guilt (from Part 2, Chapter 3)
  • Francisco discusses sex (from Part 2, Chapter 4)
  • Collapse of the Twentieth Century Motor Company (from Part 2, Chapter 10)
  • Hank Rearden's reaction to the death of someone he knows (from Part 3, Chapter 6)
  • "This Is John Galt Speaking" (from Part 3, Chapter 7)
  • Preparing for Mr. Thompson's speech (from Part 3, Chapter 7)
  • Dagny Taggart confronts a guard (from Part 3, Chapter 10)
• Study Guides: The following may be useful as guides for students or others:
  • The CliffsNotes volume on Atlas Shrugged is available online.
  • Detailed plot summaries, analysis and other materials are available from SparkNotes. Access to some materials requires free registration. A printed version is also available for purchase.
  • A briefer summary and analysis are available from The Book Reader.
  • Wikipedia provides extensive material on Atlas Shrugged, including a section by section plot summary, character descriptions, and thematic analysis.
  • A reading group guide from publisher Penguin-Putnam includes discussion questions, a brief biography, and an interview with Leonard Peikoff.
  • The section on Atlas Shrugged from Gale's Novels for Students series can be purchased for download, or for twice the price, the same material can be accessed online via Enotes (limited excerpts available free).
• The Ayn Rand Institute runs an annual essay contest for college undergraduates, with topics based on the novel (similar contests are offered based on other Rand novels).
• An account of an Atlas and the World conference held to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the novel's publication. The comments of several of the speakers are available from the Cato Institute, a co-sponsor of the event.
• One reader explains the meanings of the chapter titles
• The rights to produce Atlas Shrugged as a movie or television mini-series were sold years ago, but nothing has ever been produced. Unofficial updates on the status of a prospective movie or mini-series are available at www.missliberty.com/FilmAtlas.html.
• Description of a role playing game based on Atlas Shrugged.

Reviews, Criticism and Analysis

Links followed by this symbol are for documents in Adobe PDF (Acrobat) format, which requires Adobe Reader for viewing.

Online Materials

The following perspectives on this book are available online:

• A 1997 retrospective by Bruce Bartlett for the National Center for Policy Analysis
• A 1998 article by Harry Binswanger comparing Atlas Shrugged with James Joyce's Ulysses.
• Review by Tom Butler-Bowdon at his site about "Self-Help & Success Classics"
• A 1991 essay by Bryan Caplan for an Institute for Humane Studies contest
• Article by Mark Cashman in The Libertarian Enterprise, defending the novel against criticisms made by Tom Creasing in an earlier issue of that magazine (see below)
• Critical essay by Kevin Cassell on his personal website
• Essay by Mark Cederholm, which includes a section comparing Atlas Shrugged with The Lord of the Rings
• Famously negative review by Whittaker Chambers for National Review, in which he declares that Rand is a fascist who would send people to gas chambers
• Essay by Mendel Cooper dismissing the novel as propaganda
• Article by Tom Creasing in The Libertarian Enterprise, comparing Galt's Gulch unfavorably with a community portrayed in L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach
• Review by "Dave" at a personal website
• Review by "Dee" at Peyups.com
• A 2004 essay by Susanna Dokupil comparing the novel to "Christian apocalyptic archetypes"
• Review by Geoff Eddy at a personal website
• Brief review by Conor Friedersdorf for The Asterisk
• Review by Mike Gries at a personal website
• A 1995 review by Richard Hammer for Formulations
• Review by Stuart K. Hayashi at a personal website
• Essay by David Hayes comparing the novel to a Saturday-matinee movie serial that was released while Rand was writing it
• Review by "Helen" at a personal website
• Comparison by Glen Andrew Hendler of similarities between the novel and current events
• Review by Tycen Hopkins at a personal website
• Review by "Jandy" at a personal website
• Review by Jon K for Teen Ink
• Essay by Harold Leiendecker for the ASPEC Writers Workshop
• Review by Bobby Matherne at the Doyletics Foundation website
• Review by Simon McLeish at his personal website
• Comments by Denny Myers
• Review by Peter T for Teen Ink
• Essay by David Matthew Press, winner of the 2001 Atlas Shrugged essay contest sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute (see Related Links above)
• Essay by Adam Reed on the possible Jewish roots of the character Francisco D'Anconia (scroll down to second essay on page)
• Brief review by John Regehr at a personal website
• Commentary by Sheldon Richman lauding the book on the 40th anniversary of its publication
• Review by RJ Ritchie at a personal website
• Blog entry by JD Roth primarily discussing Atlas Shrugged, plus additional comments about Rand's ideas in general
• Dialogue by Peter Saint-André for Monadnock Review
• Blog entry Peter Saint-André
• Essay by Jessica Amanda Salmonson attacking the claim that Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book ever written (see also our FAQ on this subject)
• Review by Christian Sauve at his personal website
• A 1976 essay by Kurt Saxon recommending the novel to "survivalists"
• Essay by Mark Skousen for The Christian Science Monitor
• A 1998 review by Robert M. Slade for the Internet Review Project
• Review by Olivier Thill at his personal website
• Review by Tyler D for Teen Ink
• Essay by Charles Wieder for Objectivity examining male-female relationships as portrayed through Dagny Taggart and John Galt
• Essay by Edward W. Younkins for SOLO, about using the novel as a teaching tool in business school
• Essay by Edward W. Younkins for Le Québécois Libre
• Anonymous critique in Strange Words
• Anonymous essay at a personal website
• Anonymous review at a personal website
• Log of an online chat session discussing the book in the #forum IRC channel

The following are parodies or humorous treatments of this book:

• If (blank) Wrote Atlas Shrugged by Aaron P. Brezenski
• The Abridged Atlas Shrugged by Colin Ferm
• alt.Shrugged by Joel Haven -- Newsgroup posting that parodies both Atlas Shrugged and the newsgroup to which it was posted.
• Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later by Stephen Notley
• Oscar Shrugged by Mark Skousen
• Procrustes Stretched by Michael Wilson

Print Materials

• James T. Baker, Ayn Rand (1987)
• Andrew Bernstein, CliffsNotes: Rand's Atlas Shrugged (2000)
• Ruth Chapin Blackman, "Controversial Books by Ayn Rand and Caitlin Thomas," Christian Science Monitor (October 10, 1957)
• Nathaniel Branden, "The Moral Revolution in Atlas Shrugged," in Who Is Ayn Rand? (1962)
• John Chamberlain, "Ayn Rand's Political Parable and Thundering Melodrama," New York Herald Tribune (October 6, 1957)
• Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister is Watching You," National Review (December 28, 1957)
• Patricia Donegan, "A Point of View," Commonweal (November 8, 1957)
• James Fallows, "Liberals and Ayn Rand," The Washington Monthly (1975)
• Mimi Reisel Gladstein, The Ayn Rand Companion (1984)
• Mimi Reisel Gladstein, The New Ayn Rand Companion (1999)
• Mimi Reisel Gladstein, "Ayn Rand and Feminism: An Unlikely Alliance," in Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1999)
• Mimi Reisel Gladstein, Atlas Shrugged: Manifesto of the Mind (2000)
• Richard O. Hammer, "Review: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand," Formulations 3:2 (Winter 1995-96)
• Granville Hicks, "A Parable of Buried Talents," The New York Times Book Review (October 13, 1957)
• Riley Hughes, "Novels Reviewed," Catholic World (January 1958)
• Robert Hunt, "Science Fiction for the Age of Inflation: Reading Atlas Shrugged in the 1980s," in Coordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by George E. Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin, and Robert Scholes (1983)
• Donald Malcolm, "The New Rand Atlas," The New Yorker (October 26, 1957)
• Richard McLaughlin, "The Lady Has a Message ..." The American Mercury (January 1958)
• Ronald E. Merrill, The Ideas of Ayn Rand (1991)
• Karen Michalson, "Who Is Dagny Taggart? The Epic Hero/ine in Disguise," in Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1999)
• Stacey Olster, "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something (Red, White, and) Blue: Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Objectivist Ideology," in The Other Fifties: Interrogating Midcentury American Icons, edited by Joel Foreman (1997)
• Charles Rolo, "Comes the Revolution," Atlantic Monthly (November 1957)
• Mark Skousen, "'Atlas Shrugged' -- 50 years later," The Christian Science Monitory (March 6, 2007)
• Charles Wieder, "Who Is Dagny Taggart?" Objectivity 2:6 (1998)
• Judith Wilt, "On Atlas Shrugged," in Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1999)
• Helen Beal Woodward, "Non-Stop Daydream," Saturday Review (October 12, 1957)
• Edward W. Younkins, "Atlas Shrugged Revisited: Forty Years of Voicing the Philosophy of Freedom," The Freeman 47:5 (May 1997)
• "Book Event," Human Events 14:53 (1957)
• "No Walls Will Fall," Newsweek (October 14, 1957)
• "The Solid-Gold Dallar Sign," Time (October 14, 1957)

Additional keywords: Ann Rand, Anne Rand, Ayn Rad, Ayn Ran, Any Rand, Atlas Shrugged by Ann Rand, Alas Shrugged, Atlas Shugged, Atlas Shruged, critical analysis, critical reviews, commentary

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